Failure is the best teacher I’ve ever had. My successes massaged my ego, but my failures taught me huge and important lessons. The trouble is that although failure is an excellent teacher, it is also a vicious pedant, unremitting and unrepentent in its criticism. And sometimes it is almost too much to bear. It is harder to come back from your failures than your successes, even though you are probably better prepared.
But failure is a brutal word. It is harsh and clinical and if I am truthful with myself, I prefer not to use the term failure at all when it comes to actors and acting. Some things go well, some things do not go well and there is a thin line of grey in between.
The focus on failure will certainly cause failure. But focus on success will also often cause failure. Focussing on ‘getting it right’ will probably also cause a lot of failure. Focus on the pursuit of excellence (not excellence itself), on detail, on honouring those things under your control and those things that are under your care and responsibility. That’s the best way to avoid failure BUT you may still meet failure on that road too.
Failure is indiscriminate, it visits the Oscar Winner and the Amateur alike. Some might say the Oscar Winner has further to fall, but tell that to the broken heart of the Amateur, after all, the original meaning of that word is someone who does it for love, not money.
Failure can be hard to come back from. It often makes success feel impossible, but it is not. Failure is a step on the road. That’s all it is. Failure is a step along the way. You will meet it always. But you must learn to recognise it for what it is: temporary. It is exceptionally painful, Mamet calls it‘devastating’. Failure is your teacher, it will keep you ‘real’, it will keep you ‘grounded’, but you must not let it stop you.
These are many types of failure that you will meet in the acting profession: failure to get into drama school, failure to understand the training, failure to stay in drama school, failure to get an agent, failure to get auditions, failure to get cast, failure to…
The potential to fail is there all the time. Constantly failure makes us label ourselves. What kind of person fails all the time? A failure.
Instead, let’s go back to the original meaning of the word ‘fail’ which in Latin means to“disappoint or deceive”. Well, failure deceives. Failure deceives you into thinking that you should give up if you fail. You are disappointed and failure deceives you into believing that if you don’t get into drama school at the first attempt, you should just give in, cos you can’t be that good. Dustin Hoffmann got into the Actors Studio on his NINTH attempt.
Do not let failure deceive you. You will be disappointed. If you fail, it is a sign that you haven’t achieved what you seek just yet, just for this time, just in this moment.
In the words of Samuel Beckett:
“Fail. Fail Again. Fail Better”.
